


Fucking Magnets, How Do They Work?

by ArwenLune



Series: Rock Happy 'verse [14]
Category: Generation Kill, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Point of View, Crossover, Daily life on Atlantis, Gen, Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-03
Updated: 2013-04-03
Packaged: 2017-12-07 08:57:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/746673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/ArwenLune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lt. Lee Brittner, musing about Team</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fucking Magnets, How Do They Work?

**Author's Note:**

> So I opened up the Rock Happy file in yWriter5 and found some stuff that made me smile and wonder why I hadn't posted it. Here you go!

Some people say that to be in Atlantis you have to be broken somehow. That nobody who signs up for a posting in another _galaxy_ , where there are _life-sucking aliens_ , is a person with a healthy psyche and a lot of things to live for.

Lee hates that way of thinking.

First of all, because she's a medic, and believes in the ability of living beings to heal themselves. She's seen people recover from things nobody thought they would survive. Every society in Pegasus is living, breathing proof of just what humanity can adapt to. She's seen people grow around obstructions of all kinds, and maybe the twists remain, like a tree that's been forced to grow around a fence, but they are not broken. Affected, maybe, but whole.

It sounds too much, perhaps, like something her parents would have said. Broken. Written off.

She's never said much when the Atlanteans-are-all-fucked-up thing comes up in the mess hall or training sessions or whenever, because it's not something she can articulate out loud.

Perhaps it is because she's Combat Rescue Officer, and she _needs_ to believe in the fixability of things, in that there is a use in going into a situation no matter how fucked up it is, and work to unfuck it. That there is always hope, that there is always a way to make a difference, and that things, or people, aren't just broken and written off and beyond trying for.

She is not an optimist by nature, but she needs to believe it, because she needs to be able to put on her game face and be Lieutenant Let's Unfuck This. If she can't _believe_ , if she slips, people suddenly remember that they're taking orders from a thirty-year old female Lieutenant, somebody who started out her career as a nurse. (there is no such thing as _just_ a nurse, but most Marines don't know that until they get wounded badly enough to spend a few nights in an infirmary bed)

Suddenly getting command of field officers who tend to want to go off before they have all the necessary facts never stops being both bizarre and intimidating, and she needs her rock steady belief that she is not broken, that recovery is always possible, that the situation isn't beyond unfucking. 

So she doesn't believe in broken. But if she did - and she _doesn't_ , but if she _did_ -

Then she'd marvel at the way the universe has managed to bring together five people whose pieces fit together just right. At how between them they find the tolerance and the patience to accomodate each other's sharp edges and to fill in the missing corners. At how the Captain knows when to back her up and when to let her run. At how she can read Michèl's face and know exactly how his back is feeling and then, somehow, also how to ease things for him without calling attention to it. At how after a bad mission Laura will hug her the moment they're in the women's decon area, because she understands better than anybody what the facade of hope and fixability can cost. At how when it's crunchtime, Brad can give her breathing space and support by taking a step closer to her side, a glance, or a tiny nod. _I have your back_.

 

But Lee doesn't believe in 'broken'. So she thinks about magnets, or orbits, and pretends that it's coincidence that when the team is on 3-day standdown, she and Colbert run into each other on the range and without needing to discuss it, drop by the Boom Room with coffee. She pretends that it's coincidence when ends up in the mess hall just when the Captain has finally dragged Michèl out of the Cake for lunch.

And that when they all sit around the table on Friday night, it doesn't feel like healing.

 


End file.
